Dear reader, have you visited the Maldives e-government website? If not please do so. Not that what you will see there is altogether fascinating - after all failure to test implementations is second-nature to any government undertaking.

The site is open for public browsing it would seem. However, if you click on any of the links under the 'Browse By Subject' section, you get a highly desirable IIS security settings error. Go to the 'Job Opportunities' link at the very bottom and the listing shows the only categories that are available are 'Name of Job Category' and organizations available are 'Name of Organization'. There are freelance software developers in Maldives, motivated by a few grand, with more rigorous testing schemes. How NCIT failed so hilariously, despite the backing of USD 3.3 million, is beyond anyone.

The lack of insights into engineering life-cycles aside, the whole concept of e-whatever has been lost on NCIT. Go to the page where you register an account and scroll down to the very bottom and you will see the the statement 'Please bring along your Identity card and proceed to the below ministries for verification after the registration'. e-WHAT?!!! The USD 5.3 million spent on installing fibre-optic networks in-between the various government bodies obviously did not help connect their systems.

As for the information presentation schemes, there are websites developed by 5-year-olds which are faster and more navigable. These 5-year-olds do not use the boring web-1.0 chutzpa. They resort to more presentable and trendy interfaces, via AJAX, Flash, (at least) DHTML and what-not. Whoever hired the designer for the clunky interface on the e-gov website should be shot dead for deliberately wasting the people's money (most probably under the influence of nepotism).

This whole e-government ruckus is a complete failure. It has done nothing but waste precious time, money, resources and real-estate (it would have been better for the government to open a brewery at the premises of NCIT - more returns). This is what happens when you charge clueless novices with responsibilities beyond their capabilities. One would think that experimenting over a 5-year period (5 YEARS on this rubbish end-result?!!!) would help them attain better insights (how long does a monkey take to match shapes, anyone?). Faaig, it is time for you to stick your thumb in your rear-end and declare yourself a dunce.

PS. The citizens.gov.mv website was checked by the author on 2nd April 2009. There is the possibility that NCIT may take up arms and rectify their failures before too long (although there is every guarantee that that may not happen).